


I never let you go.

by decayinghorizon



Series: bury your flame [1]
Category: Death Note
Genre: Gen, Insomnia, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-13
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-13 18:09:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5712055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decayinghorizon/pseuds/decayinghorizon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mello left, and Matt was lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I never let you go.

**Author's Note:**

> some of my favorite Matt headcanons are of the angsty/angry/conflicted about Mello variety, so these're just little glimpses into his life between Mello leaving and joining up with him again. Everything I know about hacking I learned from movies and howstuffworks so if i'm wrong, blame them. my writing is super rusty but I hope someone enjoys this?
> 
> also definitely listen to I'm Not Part of Me by Cloud Nothings and Bury Your Flame by La Dispute if you're sad Matt trash like me and would like your heart broken.

Matt was always a natural loner, an introvert. He liked people fine, but he was a quiet kid, and didn't mind being left alone. He'd rather be absorbed in games, anyway, preoccupied with his own world.  
At Wammy's, the other kids had liked him, but rarely approached him, intuitive enough to understand. That is until Mello, who had little tact and less respect, arrived, stomping through the halls, ending up at his door and in the empty bed in his (now their) room. Somehow, loud, impulsive, in-your-face Mello worked his way into his life and became his partner in crime, his antithesis, and they were inseparable. Fast friends until the bitter end.

Matt had clung to Mello, and he didn't know why, when it was happening. Matt had always been an individual in his own right, he made his own decisions and choices, he didn't need Mello to tell him what to do, only half-listened when he did. Maybe that was what was different, why he held on so fiercely to him, to them. Everyone else saw Mello as a leader, someone strong to cower behind, to fear, but Matt got to see him as something else, all his masks stripped away. He saw Mello as a friend, and he loved him.  
So he clung, because letting go was losing him.

They always had a multitude of different ways to sneak out of Wammy's; ways onto the roof, out of the locked gates at night, stairless ways down from the top floors. After Mello left, Matt never set foot in those places, had to find different routes, his own routes, ways Mello had never been. if he traced Mello's footsteps, he'd always feel the pain in his chest, and then he couldn't breathe, and then he couldn't live. So he found ways.  
He almost didn't, though.  
There were late nights that felt like sleepwalking where he followed the same old paths, felt Mello's ghost in every step, climbed to the roof and heard Mello's voice whisper 'jump' as he put a boot on the edge, but something always brought him down; the frigid air in January or the thought of seeing his face again, the cross on the building reminding him of the rosary Mello wore around his neck.  
Maybe he was still alive just to spite him.

He often woke abruptly, drenched in sweat and gasping for air, the imagined weight in his chest compressing his lungs and polluting his mind. In his nightmares he saw fire and empty beds, figures cloaked in black that he always reached for but could never touch.

He would sometimes go to breakfast after fitful nights, see the concerned looks in his direction, and know he'd been screaming again. 

Months after Mello's departure, he left Wammy's with no explanation, but everyone knew. 

He didn't know what he was going to do, out on his own, but he knew he couldn't take being there another day, couldn't trust himself to survive amid the memories that suffocated him.  
He found an apartment with L's money and forged documents, began to live for late nights awake and sleeping past sunset. He relished the feeling of being alive at 4am surrounded by coffee cups and nicotine, red bull cans and ash trays.  
If he stayed up long enough, slept through the days, there was nothing that could catch him. If his nights felt like day, there could be no agonizing night, no racing thoughts or impossible what ifs. He felt numb, and that was okay with him.

The apartment was a place all his own, where Mello had never been or seen, no trace of him there. He found that Mello was something he could never quite shake, though, and often imagined him leaning against his countertop with a half-eaten chocolate bar, nose scrunched up as he surveyed the mess that was Matt's living room.  
It felt wrong, somehow, to be there on his own. like a betrayal. It was fitting. 

Years later, when he left for LA, he left a cigarette burn in the counter and a hole in the kitchen wall, taking his bloodied knuckles with him.

He became infamous, in a way. He was loyal to no one, hired most frequently by various underground organizations as a freelancer. He hacked into secret bases and banks, pulling information and wiping databases. When the intended victims would catch wind of who they were being targeted by, they would always increase their security tenfold, installing state of the art firewalls and shiny new antivirus softwares, but it never stopped him. In fact, it was almost too easy, child's play. He was a genius after all; once upon a time he was even number one. 

As a calling card, he left M's embedded in all his codes, his viruses, so anyone affected would know who did it but could never trace him, a vanishing act that served as a portfolio for his potential clients.  
If you looked closer, knew which program to open and where to focus, there were messages, too. Spelled out plainly in ones and zeroes, in a sea of nondescript code, most often they were the words 'I miss you'. His pain, weaponized, turned into viruses to infect his targets the way it had infected him. He felt a sick joy in it, and knew that if Mello caught wind of him, which he would, he would analyze that code. Mello knew binary. Matt knows because he started teaching him at Wammy's, just before he left, and Mello never leaves anything half-finished. Mello studied his contracts thoroughly and completely. He would read the fine print, and Matt just hoped that message would cut like a knife, ache like loneliness.  
For once, he wanted Mello to hurt.

He hated running, because he could never run far enough, and he never knew where he was running, where he was trying to go. It couldn't change him, it couldn't rewrite the memories, change the past, make him any less fucked up. Distance didn't fix anything, it just took him far away from anything that ever mattered.

He smoked until he imagined his lungs turning black, and didn't care. Mello was already a cancer he couldn't cure, might as well have another. If it killed him, it'd only be doing him a favor.

He had dark circles like fresh bruises and constant caffeine shakes, bleeding bottom lip from worrying teeth. Something snapped, at some point, and the illusion of being okay lapsed back into sleepless nights and a fragile psyche. On some level he wonders if he deserves this, on another he only blames one person.

He drowns his thoughts with video game blood and gunshots, pushing buttons until he can't feel his fingers and his mind's too tired to think of anything except his strategy and kill count. He wonders how violent the world is for Mello, how much trouble he's found; wonders if Mello's even alive as he aims down his sights and shoots an NPC in the head.

It hurts him to think his name, sometimes, and he thinks he might be remembering things better than they were, like at some point he altered the truth. He doesn't know who Mello is anymore, doesn't know if he would recognize him. Maybe it's better that way, he thinks, but knows he's still nowhere close to letting go.

He gets the call, and his first instinct is to scream. Then, eventually, agree. Then punch a hole in the wall to match the one in his chest.


End file.
